


heavy in my veins

by magicalmayhems



Series: don't look at your phone verse [5]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Red & Green & Blue & Yellow | Pokemon Red Green Blue Yellow Versions
Genre: And a happy ending, Bitter, Bittersweet, Gen, SO, Sweet, agatha is bitter, and then, but thats bc shes lonely, credit for agatha's definitions for kindness niceness loving and love go to tessa violet, i love my elite four grandma so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 07:13:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18256358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicalmayhems/pseuds/magicalmayhems
Summary: Agatha is bitter now. A bitter, spiteful old woman. Isn’t that what Samuel had said?





	heavy in my veins

She hides her hurt with a vicious battle style and a too-sharp tongue. After all, that’s what everyone is expecting, right? May as well give them what they came for. Not that many people come, anyway. Her battling is far too powerful for the myriad of casual battlers that Kanto seems to be made up of, and she doesn’t have many friends. Not since the breakup, when Samuel seemed to decide that utterly ruining her reputation was the only form of revenge his fragile male ego could take.

So, when a smirking kid with Samuel’s—Ryan’s—eyes and her face comes strolling in, her heart starts beating just the slightest bit faster. This is her grandson, and he—

doesn’t know that. Of course. Samuel hid her relation to his family expertly, and what kid doubts their grandfather enough to figure out that she—the bitter old woman—is a part of their family? She gives him her customary battle speech, ignoring the way her heart twists to see Ryan’s eyes looking at her like she’s just another opponent. Another obstacle.

She’s proud of Blue. Of course, she is! The kid’s talented beyond belief, and she watches his battle style almost desperately. This could have been a bonding activity for them in another world, one where Samuel supported her dreams—or even just let her see her grandkids every once in a while because that’s right, she has two grandkids.

He beats her, and for one irrational second, she wants to hug him. She clamps down on that urge and makes a flippant remark about how she knew his old man back in the day. He has no idea how intimately that knowledge runs.

She knows that he prefers omelets to waffles but pancakes to omelets. She knows that he takes his tea with a teaspoon of sugar because he’s taken it that way his entire life. She knows that he’s helplessly ticklish on the back of his neck and that his favorite color happens to be yellow.

But she doesn’t mention any of that. She says he’s a washed-up has-been and notes, with some pleasure, that he seems to agree.

He’s champion for five minutes. The press—when they bother to cover him at all—call him things like “The Five-Minute Master” and “Shortest-Lived Champion”. Mostly, they like to cover his rival.

Red comes through just as he leaves. She winces internally and gives him her best fight. In the end, it’s not enough. He goes through, ending Blue’s reign just as quickly as it began.

Despite herself, she’s impressed. Blue’s skilled and she’d have no problem publicly acknowledging him as her grandson, but Red...well.

There’s a reason he was able to take down an entire crime syndicate.

_(She’d wanted to interfere when rumors of Team Rocket and their Pokémon-stealing ways surfaced and started circling around the region, but Lance had told her that it wouldn’t be a good idea._

_Considering that he only spoke to her twice a month—if that—she’d agreed in order to keep their fragile work relationship afloat._

_That was stupid.)_

She goes home with the adrenaline of a good battle still rushing through her veins, making her feel years younger.

Say what you will about her, but she’s never a sore loser. Losing is only upsetting when it’s clear that she _deserved_ to win, but didn’t. If someone beats her, fairly and with skill, she’ll concede defeat proudly.

Of course, most people don’t care about that, plain and simple. She’s a fierce, respected battler, known to be bitterer than the bitterest coffee and more poisonous than all her Pokémon piled together.

People respect her, yes. But more than that, people fear her and her sharp, acidic humor, known for cutting to the heart of things whether it’s wanted or not.

* * *

People call her unkind. She is not unkind. She is not nice, certainly, but she is not unkind.

Something that she feels is necessary in Kanto’s dialect is a way to distinguish between loving someone, and the action of loving someone.

Loving someone is nice. The action of loving someone is kind.

Niceness, to her, means censoring yourself. It means biting your tongue when someone starts saying things you disagree with, and then quickly changing the subject. She has been nice. She has bitten her tongue and held her silence and in the end it didn’t help anyway.

Kindness is rougher. Kindness is blunt. Kindness means being willing to have hard conversations and sharing your thoughts without neither pause nor censorship. Kindness is being able to look your partner in the eye and tell them that they’re being stupid for trying to change who they are in a way that’s clearly not bringing them any happiness.

To love someone means staying with them and not bringing up your issues until it’s too late and there’s a gaping chasm between you that neither of you can fix. Loving someone is bringing up your issues, in telling them “you are hurting me and here’s why”.

If they listen to you but do nothing, they love you. If they listen to you and actively try to better themselves for you, they are loving you.

If you’re loving someone, if you’re bringing up all your issues and trying to have those hard conversations but your partner is not reciprocating, then they love you and you deserve better than someone who loves you without loving you. This is a lesson that Agatha has had to learn through months of stony silences, cold sheets, separate lunches and sniping commentary that is made to hurt.

She has learned this throughout court, throughout signed paperwork and consoling Ryan—her baby, her boy—through the fact that he can’t see his mama anymore.

She has learned this through tears and anger and pain, hardening her soft heart through an argument that lasted long after Ryan—their one shared priority—went to sleep. The argument was never resolved.

She will not forget the difference between kindness and niceness. She will not forget which one is appropriate where, and why, and for how long, and what to do if it still does not help.

After all, she’s already paid a heavy price for not knowing. She lost her friends and family in one fell swoop, and while there’s not much of real importance anyone can take from her (after all, taking someone's Pokémon without their consent is punishable by law), she still needs to remember.

For her own sake, if no one else’s.

* * *

Agatha never expected to come into contact with her family ever again. She’s made her peace with this through sheer necessity—she can’t fall apart whenever someone who walks though reminds her of Ryan, no matter how much she may or may not want to.

So, when her phone rings, she answers without glancing at it, mentally noting that it has to be Lance, what with their little tiff a few days ago.

“Lance, I swear, if you try to—” She says. She’s so tired of being lonely, but what can she do, really? Her reputation is more than enough to scare away any potential lovers and her family will never—

“Neither of us are Lance.” Says a voice that she’s only heard once before.

“Blue?” She asks softly, almost not daring to believe it. She pinches herself—just in case, and when she continues her voice is gruff again. “Why are you speaking to me?”

“Well, why not?” A female voice asks, and Agatha nearly cries. Her breath hitches for a moment before she can control it.

That’s Daisy, Agatha knows that much. “I thought Samuel turned you against me.” She laughs, sharp and bitter and all wrong in her mouth because these are her grandchildren and she’s being so bitter. Still, they deserve an explanation. “God knows he tried to turn everyone else against me—and succeeded, too.”

“He tried.” Blue says. Agatha’s about to ask _well then why contact me at all_ when he continues. “But then again, he’s a shitty grandparent so I didn’t trust him. It was after our battle—I never even knew you were my Grandma ‘til recently.”

“Recently,” Agatha echoes, reeling with the knowledge that Samuel managed to become an awful grandparent—he was always so good with Ryan—and, more importantly, the fact that Blue called her his grandmother. “How recent is recently?”

She needs to know. For her own peace of mind, if nothing else.  

“Yesterday-recently.” Daisy contributes.

She snorts before she can stop herself. Typical. Still, this means that they contacted her practically the moment they knew, which is—well. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you at all.” She says. May as well lay all her cards on the table early on.

Daisy stammers for a bit. “That's—that...I can't say I—that we would have done anything if—”

Agatha takes pity on her. “If Samuel wasn’t terrible?” She supplies. “His ego’s always been his biggest problem.” She wasn’t expecting to say that, but hey. The kids are obviously already skeptical, may as well feed the fire. “'S why we broke up. He couldn't handle my ambition, drive, and flat-out talent.” Egotistical? Yes. Does it matter? Not really.

“He sniped at me. I sniped back. Eventually, we fought about everything and just decided to divorce on 'friendly' terms.” They weren’t friendly at all. They were flat-out hostile, but everyone believes the terms were friendly and never listened to any arguments otherwise.

Blue calls her old. It’s not untrue, so she agrees.

"This is the most pleasant interaction I've ever had with either of my grandparents in at least ten years." Daisy says.

Agatha snorts, surprised. “Not a hard margin to hit if this is pleasant,” She observes. To lessen the sting, she continues, “I’m glad you sought me out.”

She _is_ genuinely grateful they sought her out. At least this way she can have a halfway decent relationship with her family.

"Yeah." Blue says, a little choked up. Agatha nearly comments on it before biting her tongue. "Us, too. Can we call you again?"

“No,” She deadpans before she can stop herself. “I spent this entire time speaking to you only to reveal we could only do it once.”

Blue snorts. Agatha blinks. Well, that’s interesting. Seems he inherited her dry humor.

“Great,” He says, “talk to you whenever. Also, you should call us, too.”

Oh. They actively want her to call them. Well. She scoffs again. They’ll regret that. Still, “Fine. I’ll call both of you at least twice a week.”

She may as well warn them. After a few moments, she hits the end call button.

* * *

Blue made her contact name “aghosta christie”.

Agatha stares at the screenshot with something approaching awed embarrassment. Well, two can play at that game.

_You have changed this number’s contact name to “Oran Oak”._

( _Just once_ , Agatha thinks, allowing herself to grin as she sends a screenshot back to him).

**Author's Note:**

> i never expected to have Feelings about agatha but here we are, ~1800 words later and im having All The Feelings


End file.
